Terms of Service

1. Agreeing to these Terms

You agree to these Terms by creating an account, by creating a church on Sanctuary, or by using the Service. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

If you set up a church on Sanctuary or accept these Terms on its behalf, you confirm that you are authorized to bind that church to them. “Your church” then means the church or organization you named, and these Terms bind it.

Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle personal information and forms part of these Terms.

2. Accounts

• You must be at least 13 years old to have a Sanctuary account. Churches may keep records about younger children, as described under “Your church’s data”, but children under 13 may not hold their own login.
• Give accurate information and keep it up to date. Keep your password and sign-in codes private; you are responsible for activity under your account.
• Church administrators decide who joins their church on Sanctuary and what each person can see and do. Your church is responsible for the people it invites and the access it gives them.
• Tell us promptly at support@onesanctuary.app if you believe your account has been used without your permission.

3. Your church’s data

“Church Data” is the information your church and its people put into Sanctuary: people and family records, attendance and check-ins, giving records, messages, forms, files and everything else your church stores in the Service.

• Your church owns its Church Data and controls it. We handle it on your church’s behalf, to provide the Service and as your church directs through the Service, and for no other purpose.
• Your church is responsible for having the right to collect, store and use its Church Data — including any consents and notices the law requires — and for its accuracy.
• Children. Where your church records information about children (for example names, guardians, allergies, medical or custody notes, and check-in history), your church is responsible for obtaining any parent or guardian permission the law or its own policies require, and for deciding who in the church may see it.
• Do not store in Sanctuary information it is not designed to hold, such as Social Security numbers, full payment card numbers, or passwords for other services.
• You can export Church Data from Sanctuary while your church’s account is open. After a church closes its account, we delete or anonymize its Church Data within a reasonable period, normally 90 days, except where the law requires us to keep it. Copies in backups are removed as those backups expire.
• We keep Church Data confidential, protect it with reasonable technical and organizational measures, and limit access to it within our business to what is needed to run and support the Service. We use the service providers listed in the Privacy Policy to host and operate the Service, under terms that require them to protect the data.
• If we become aware of unauthorized access to your church’s Church Data, we will notify your church’s administrators without undue delay and tell them what we know.

4. Plans, trials and billing

Sanctuary subscriptions are purchased and managed on the web at onesanctuary.app. The mobile apps are free companions for churches that already use Sanctuary and contain no purchasing. By starting a paid plan, your church agrees that:

• A free trial, where offered, ends on the date shown when it starts. Nothing is charged during a trial, and a church that does not choose a plan stays on the free tier.
• Payment is charged to the payment method on file for your church when a paid plan starts, and then at the start of each billing period.
• Subscriptions renew automatically, monthly or yearly as chosen, until cancelled.
• You can change plan or cancel at any time from Church Settings on the web. Cancelling stops future renewals; access continues until the end of the period already paid for.
• Fees are non-refundable for the current period, except where the law requires otherwise or we charged you in error. Pay-as-you-go items such as text messages, email credits and phone numbers are non-refundable once used.
• Prices exclude taxes unless shown otherwise; your church is responsible for any taxes that apply to its purchases.
• We give at least 30 days’ notice of a price increase on an existing plan, by email to your church’s administrators. The new price applies from your next billing period after the notice.
• If a payment fails and is not resolved, paid features may be paused or the church moved to the free tier. Your church’s data is kept, and access is restored when payment is made.

Current plans and prices are shown on the pricing page. Charges for card and bank payments made to your church through Sanctuary Give are described under “Giving and payments”.

5. Giving and payments

Sanctuary Give lets churches accept gifts online. Payments are processed by Stripe, not by us, under Stripe’s own agreement, which your church accepts when it connects a Stripe account. We are not a bank, money transmitter or payment processor, and we never hold your church’s funds.

• Your church is the recipient of every gift and is responsible for its relationship with its givers, including refunds, disputes and chargebacks, and for honoring any designation it accepts.
• Stripe may hold, delay or refuse payments, or close a connected account, under its own rules. We are not responsible for Stripe’s decisions.
• Giving statements and receipts are produced from your church’s own records. Your church is responsible for their accuracy and for meeting any tax and charitable-receipt rules that apply to it. Sanctuary does not give tax or legal advice.
• Processing fees are set by Stripe and shown when your church connects. Any Sanctuary platform fee is shown before it applies.

6. Text messages

Churches using Sanctuary can send text messages to their congregation about services, events, giving, and serving commitments, and can reply to messages sent to them. By agreeing to receive them, you agree to the following:

• Messages are only sent to people who have given the church permission — by agreeing to it on one of the church’s forms, by texting the church first, or by telling the church directly.
• Message frequency varies by church and by what you have signed up to. Message and data rates may apply.
• Reply STOP to any message to stop receiving them. This takes effect immediately. Reply HELP for help.
• Carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages.
• Phone numbers and consent records collected for messaging are never shared with or sold to third parties for marketing purposes. See the Privacy Policy.

A church that sends texts or emails through Sanctuary is responsible for having each person’s permission and for following the laws that apply to its messages, including the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and CAN-SPAM. We may pause a church’s texting or email to protect the people receiving it or Sanctuary’s ability to deliver messages for every church.

7. Background checks

Background checks ordered through Sanctuary are carried out by Checkr under its own terms. Your church is the user of each report under the Fair Credit Reporting Act and similar laws, and is responsible for the required disclosures and authorizations, for any decision it makes, and for the pre-adverse and adverse action process. Sanctuary records only the status of a check; it does not receive or store the report, or anyone’s Social Security number.

8. Check-in and child safety

Sanctuary Check-Ins helps churches record who is present, print name labels and security codes, and match children with the adults collecting them. It is a tool that supports your church’s own safety procedures; it does not replace them. Your church remains responsible for supervising children, for its pick-up and safety policies, for training its volunteers, and for acting on allergy, medical and custody information. Printers, devices and networks can fail, and your church should have a way to continue safely when they do.

9. Shepherd and other AI features

• Shepherd, Sanctuary’s assistant, and other AI features generate suggestions and drafts using a large language model. They can be wrong or incomplete. Review what they produce before you rely on it or send it to anyone.
• Actions that reach other people — such as sending messages — wait for a person to confirm them.
• To answer a request, the relevant Church Data is sent to our AI provider, Anthropic, which processes it to generate the response under terms that do not allow it to train its models on that data.

10. Acceptable use

You and your church agree not to:

• use the Service for anything unlawful, or to harass, threaten, defraud or deceive anyone;
• send messages people have not agreed to receive, or use the Service to send spam;
• upload material you do not have the right to share, or that is malicious, such as viruses;
• try to access another church’s data or anyone’s account without permission, or probe, scan or test the Service’s security without our written permission;
• copy, resell or reverse engineer the Service, scrape it, or use it to build a competing product;
• get around limits or restrictions in the Service, or interfere with its operation for others.

11. Content you upload

You keep ownership of the text, images, video, audio and other material you or your church add to the Service. You give us permission to store, copy, resize and display that material only as needed to run the Service for your church and the people it shares it with.

• Only upload material you own or have permission to use. Song lyrics, chord charts, recordings, photos and videos made by others usually need a licence, such as a CCLI or streaming licence for worship songs.
• Your church is responsible for the material it publishes, and for removing anything it no longer has the right to share.
• We may remove material that we believe infringes someone else’s rights or breaks these Terms.

If you believe material on the Service infringes your copyright, see our Copyright Policy. Accounts that repeatedly upload infringing material will be closed.

12. Our service and third-party services

The Service, its software and its design belong to us and our licensors. These Terms give your church a right to use the Service while its account is open; they do not transfer any ownership. If you send us feedback or ideas, we may use them without obligation to you.

Some features connect to services we do not control — for example Stripe, Checkr, YouTube, Planning Center, and Google and Apple sign-in. Their own terms apply to your use of them, and we are not responsible for them. Features marked early access or beta are offered as they are and may change or be withdrawn.

13. Suspension and closing an account

• Your church can stop using the Service and close its account at any time. You can delete your own account at any time from your profile, or from our Account Deletion page.
• We may suspend or close an account, or part of the Service for it, if it breaks these Terms, does not pay, puts other people or the Service at risk, or if the law requires it. Where it is reasonable, we will give notice and a chance to put things right first.
• When an account closes, the right to use the Service ends. Sections that by their nature should continue — including those on Church Data, payments owed, disclaimers, limits of liability, indemnity and disputes — continue to apply.

14. Disclaimers

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE”. TO THE FULLEST EXTENT THE LAW ALLOWS, WE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DO NOT PROMISE THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE OR SECURE, OR THAT DATA WILL NEVER BE LOST — KEEP YOUR OWN COPIES OF ANYTHING YOUR CHURCH CANNOT BE WITHOUT.

Sanctuary does not provide legal, tax, financial, safeguarding or pastoral advice, and nothing in the Service is a substitute for it.

15. Limitation of liability

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT THE LAW ALLOWS: (A) WE ARE NOT LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR LOST PROFITS, LOST DONATIONS, LOST DATA OR LOSS OF GOODWILL, EVEN IF WE WERE TOLD THEY WERE POSSIBLE; AND (B) OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS RELATING TO THE SERVICE OR THESE TERMS IS LIMITED TO THE GREATER OF THE AMOUNT YOUR CHURCH PAID US FOR THE SERVICE IN THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM, OR ONE HUNDRED U.S. DOLLARS ($100). GIFTS AND PAYMENTS PROCESSED BY STRIPE ARE NOT AMOUNTS PAID TO US.

Some places do not allow some of these limits; where that is so, they apply to the extent the law allows.

16. Indemnity

Your church will defend and indemnify us against claims, losses and reasonable costs (including legal fees) brought by third parties that arise from its Church Data, the material it publishes, the messages it sends, its use of giving or background checks, or its breach of these Terms or of the law.

17. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Florida, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, and by U.S. federal law where it applies.

If a dispute arises, contact us first at support@onesanctuary.app and we will try in good faith to resolve it informally within 30 days. If we cannot, the dispute will be decided only by the state or federal courts located in Florida, and you and we consent to their jurisdiction. Either side may still seek urgent relief to protect its rights.

18. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms as the Service and the law change. If a change is material, we will tell your church’s administrators by email or in the Service before it takes effect, and the date at the top will change. A church administrator may be asked to accept the updated Terms to keep using the Service. Continuing to use the Service after a change takes effect means you accept it.

19. Transfer of this agreement

We may transfer this agreement, and our rights and obligations under it, to a business that takes over the Service — including a company formed to operate Sanctuary, such as a limited liability company, or a buyer of the business — and we will tell your church if we do. Your church may not transfer this agreement without our written consent.

20. General

• These Terms, with the Privacy Policy and any order or plan details shown when you purchase, are the whole agreement between your church and us about the Service.
• If any part of these Terms cannot be enforced, the rest continues to apply. Not enforcing a right straight away does not waive it.
• We are not responsible for delays or failures caused by events outside our reasonable control.
• You agree that we may give notices and other communications electronically — by email to the address on your account or your church’s administrators, or in the Service — and that they satisfy any requirement that they be in writing. Notices to us go to support@onesanctuary.app.

21. Contact

Sanctuary is operated by Brandon Bilsborough, a sole proprietor doing business as “Sanctuary” in the State of Florida. Questions about these Terms: support@onesanctuary.app.